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Reliability Estimation of Door Hinge for Home Appliances

This paper presents the reliability estimation of door hinge for home appliances, which consists of bushing and shaft. The predominant failure mechanism of bushing made of polyoxymethylene(POM) is brittle fracture due to decrease of strength caused by voids existing, and that of shaft made of acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene(ABS) is creep due to plastic deformation caused by excessive temperature and lowering of glass transition temperature by absorbed moisture. Since the brittle fracture of bushing is overstress failure mechanism, the load-strength interference model is used to estimate the failure rate of it along with failure analysis. By the way, the creep of shaft is wearout failure mechanism, and an accelerated life test is then planned and implemented to estimate its lifetime. Through the technical review about failure mechanism, temperature and humidity are selected as accelerating variables. Assuming Weibull lifetime distribution and Eyring model, the life-stress relationship and acceleration factor, B$_{10}$ life and its lower bound with 90% confidence at worst case use condition are estimated by analyzing the accelerated life test data.a.